The Dance
by Bellatrix7
Summary: This story has been prompted by sick-atxxheart's suicide challenge. Hermione is pushed too far, only one man can save her, but will she let him?


AN: This is for a suicide fanfiction challenge by Sick-atxxheart. so... yeah... its morbid sorry, but it would not be my first morbid story now would it?

Now the criteria was:

"**The Suicide Challenge**

So this is a really difficult topic for anyone, and it is surely a difficult topic to write about. I am inspired for this by the people around me.

So the basis is this. Write a story about someone who is suicidal and ends up killing themselves, or from the POV of someone who knows the suicidal person.

Most likely angst, maybe romance, maybe hurt/comfort, tragedy, whatever. Your choice. Make it deep. It has to be, with this topic.

Below is some inspiration lines. You must use one or more of them."

I chose lines: 3, 6, 13, 18, and 19

* * *

The Dance

I stand on the edge, and I can't move. I can't move. I can't move. Once upon a time I had all the answers, I was the "know-it-all", I had the answers. Now, look at me. Alone and utterly alone with nothing save for my hundreds of books to save me from myself.

He's left me. Honestly he never knew I loved him so he could never leave me, but somehow it seems that I have missed my window of opportunity with Severus Snape and now, what do I have left to live for? What is left for me? At the end of the war Ron was lost and with him my love, and Harry was irreversibly damaged. No one could get through to him after Ron died. That may have been the final push that Harry needed to kill Voldemort. Only weeks latter Harry and Ginny rushed into marriage. I guess she got through to him too. I cannot help but feel jealous of those two. Happy. Starting their own little family. Only days after their wedding I found out that I was pregnant. Pregnant, with Ron's child, and I realized that this child would be the one good thing to come out of this war for me.

I was three months pregnant when I woke one morning gripped in pain and covered in blood. Hot red blood. My bold, no my child's blood. Ron's child's blood, Ron. In an instant Ron was going to be with me for the rest of my life and just as quickly he was gone. Forever.

I began to work at Hogwarts not long after that I hoped working would take my mind off of life. I was wrong. I sat at the Head Table adorned in black robes newly appointed Transfiguration Professor and Gryffindor Head of House. Happy on the outside, dying and screaming on the inside. I was so numb to the world not even Severus Snape's snide remarks were able to sting me the way they once were. Perhaps that is how he figured out that something was wrong with me.

Minerva didn't know, Harry didn't know, Ginny, Hagrid, Molly, nobody knew how I felt, how I was slowly dying, but Severus Snape knew. Somehow just by sitting beside me he knew that I was slowly giving into mortality slowly and alone. He began to send students to my class room through the week maybe once or twice sometimes to give other students a note or ask me if I had any ingredients in my personal stores, which more often than not I did. He cared, I saw that and somehow I was able to lead myself to believe he loved me. Only now I see he didn't.

We began to get close, Severus and I, and my feelings for him began to rapidly develop. Only I couldn't bring myself to tell him. One night I broke down while patrolling the halls. I was alone with only my dark mind to amuse myself with and it lead to Ron and our child. Both lost to me.

Tears streamed down my face as I remembered Ron. The last time I saw him he was going after Fenir Greyback and Lucius Malfoy. He kissed my forehead and whispered \, "I love you, and when this is over we'll start our life together. Just you and I."

I faintly smiled and whispered my reply, "I'll be waiting for you."

With a final kiss he ran off into the terrors of the castle as I looked after him one last time. That memory was the one Severus Snape found me crying over in the middle of the night in the middle of the corridor.

He didn't say much of anything, but simply sat beside me letting me rest my head on his shoulder and cry. He held me as I sobbed and when I had nothing left to cry and my body was exhausted he lifted me up and brought me to my rooms. He laid me on my bed and drew the covers up around me and told me to sleep. He told me there was nothing wrong with mourning for them as long as I knew I couldn't change what had happened.

He left me as I whispered, "Please don't go, I need you."

I didn't think he ever heard me say that, and I know I sounded desperate but I just didn't want to be alone that night.

As the months went on and fall turned to winter and winter to spring I fell in love with Severus Tobias Snape and I loathed admitting it even to myself. But once I did admit it to myself I was okay with it even happy with it. Until I chose to tell him, that is.

We were doing our rounds and talking quietly to each other. Around midnight we made our way to my doors and we stopped.

I looked up at him, "Severus," I whispered, "I have something sort of important to tell you."

"Are you waiting for my permission to speak, Professor Granger?" he asked coolly with an arched eyebrow.

"No, Severus. I just wanted to know you were listening is all. For some time now, I erm… I have begun to regard you as a sort of a friend. Well more recently I've discovered that those feelings are well more than just the kind you regard your friends with," I took a deep breath and quickly said, "Severus, I think I love you."

There was a pause, an infinite pause that made me want to scream and cry because it said everything that he was not saying.

Then he spoke and I knew it was over, "Hermione, you're better off without me. I'm so much older than you. Old enough to be your father."

"That doesn't matter to me. I _love_ you."

"No, you just think you love me. That is so much different than actually loving me. Besides I do not, and will never, love you as you may love me. Hermione, you can do so much bet-"

I didn't finish listening to him as I opened my door and slammed it shut behind me, sinking to the ground. Leaving him behind me, for good.

Tonight, well tonight I wrote him a letter and left if on his office desk after he had gone on his rounds. I said goodbye to the room and with that letter I said goodbye to Severus.

Now, standing barefoot in my crimson and black flowing robes. Silk with lace around the low cut neck line and the flowing length of the robe. My hair is down for the first time in a long time. The curls are loose and flow down my back, rich and dark some prematurely grey strands mixed in among the others. The night air is cool yet not freezing. May has brought about the warmth that the summer promises. Promises I will never know again.

I look down the edge of the tower. The Astronomy Tower, somehow I have managed to find the one night that Sinstra has not scheduled a seventh year class. May third, Professor Granger standing on the edge between life and death. Precariously close to death. Nothing left for me to do. I close my eyes. I feel the wind play with my hair. My bare feet are numb to the cold stone beneath them. I'm flirting with death now, playing a game with it. The sky is clear and I cannot help but wonder if the sky looks like it did the night Dumbledore died in this tower. Clear, dark, stars and he moon just the stars and the moon not a cloud in the sky jus the stars and the moon. They'll find me tomorrow broken and on the ground.

I lean into the wind, I let it caress my skin. It's a flirtations dance and one that I will let the night lead me into. I let my foot dangle over the edge almost testing the water.

"Hermione?"

I step back, away from the dance. Its him its his voice his unmistakably smooth voice.

"Severus? Why are you here?" I do not look at him I know if I do I will no longer want to dance. "Go away, Severus. I don't want you here."

"No, but you need me," Severus whispered.

"I. Do. Not. Need. You."

"You said you did once, you said you needed me. I wasn't willing to listened or be here then but I am now. Please step towards me. Do it to save your life."

"I don't want to save my life. I don't want to be here anymore. There is nothing for me here," I whisper back. I fight the tears that threaten to spill from my eyes.

"If you cant live for yourself… could you live for me?" His words sound choked, scared even.

"Severus, you're wrong. You're better off without me," I spit back.

I turn and look at him daring him to save me. "I love you, Hermione."

"No, you don't, Severus. You just think you do. Forget about me. Severus, please," those are the last words I say to him, the last words I say.

I lean backwards into the night.

He rushes to the edge.

He watches me fall.

He tries to save me.

Its too late though, because I've taken my step in the dance and waltz into eternal darkness.

**END**

_RIP_

* * *

AN: Now seeing as I did not tell you what the lines were that I was using I will tell you now:

_3) What do I have to live for? What is left for me now?_

_6) You're better off without me._

___13) I'll be waiting for you._

_____18) If you can't live for yourself... could you live for me?_  


___19) Please don't go! I love/need you!_

___Now as you may have noticed at least one of these lines was used more than once. Again I hope you enjoyed this._

___R_

___And_

___R!_


End file.
